How the Trump White House crushed a Republican plan to curb his power grab

The Trump administration’s disregard for Congress’s “power of the purse” has raised alarms across Washington, including within his own party. According to a new report from NOTUS, when one top GOP official sought to rein in the president’s monetary power grab, his efforts were swiftly quashed.

As the U.S. Constitution dictates, only Congress has the power to decide how government funds are spent and distributed. Since taking office for his second term, however, President Donald Trump has largely disregarded this rule, refusing to spend certain funds explicitly allocated by Congress, such as $5 billion in previously approved foreign aid payments.

While many Republicans in Congress have gone along with Trump’s withholding of these funds, at least one leading House GOP member attempted to rein things in. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee, included a provision in a 2026 funding bill for the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Subcommittee that would have blunted the tactic Trump has favored for withholding funds, sources close to the matter told NOTUS.

This tactic, known as “pocket rescission,” involves the president requesting that a piece of allocated funding be withheld, giving Congress a certain amount of days to consider the request. This request, however, is made too late in the fiscal year for Congress to respond, and once the calendar ticks over to the next fiscal year, the White House considers the funding officially withheld.

Back in July, Díaz-Balart added a clause to the fiscal bill that would have given Congress 45 extra days to respond to such requests made late in the fiscal year.

The sources that spoke with NOTUS claimed that Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and originator of the pocket rescission strategy, reached out to the GOP congressman to express the Trump administration’s concern over the provision.

Other Republican members of the Appropriations Committee were also reportedly pressured to get the wording out of the bill. These officials then, in turn, applied their own pressure to Díaz-Balart. In short order, the provision disappeared from the bill.

Several GOP committee members, including Rep. Andrew Clyde and Rep. Andy Harris, confirmed that they had conversations with Díaz-Balart about the issue.

For his own part, Díaz-Balart claimed that the original provision was not specifically meant to target Trump or his administration.

“I’ve always believed that Congress has a tendency to always give too much away to the administration — any president, any administration,” the Florida congressman told NOTUS.